


your future is what you make it so make it good

by aanau



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of PTSD, Time Travel AU, but like...whats new with me writing im a dialogue nut, except steven goes WAAAAAY back, no plot just character interactions and steven venting to his mom, steven RANTS like...expect big blocks of dialogue, steven has enough mother issues as is, the back to the future reference in the title is the extent of those references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22193065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aanau/pseuds/aanau
Summary: The Diamonds just made their final attack on Earth. The remaining Crystal Gems drag themselves away from the fray of monsters to safety, with a newcomer who has found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe not?Steven talks to his mom and maybe this is precisely the right time and place for both of them.
Relationships: Rose Quartz & Steven Universe
Comments: 10
Kudos: 219





	your future is what you make it so make it good

**Author's Note:**

> plot who needs plot lets just throw steven into the scene and get to those character interactions i adore
> 
> i wasn't planning on posting this cause it was self indulgent and written one late night where i couldn't sleep, so i hope that isn't too obvious in the writing. i wouldn't mind anyone pointing out mistakes or poorly crafted sentences since im a run-on sentencer by nature and need someone to keep me in check sometimes.

Steven catches his breath as the four settle in the otherwise empty Crystal Gem base. Pearl sobs in the corner. Garnet holds herself together in the back. Rose stands perfectly still, looking Steven up and down.

“How did you know about the blast?” Rose questions, recalling the way the human boy had sprinted through the field in the opposite direction of the retreating Homeworld gems, yelling that something was coming. Rose looked into the sky, and raised her shield and pulled in her two closest friends. 

When she lowered it, the gems left unprotected had begun to morph into monsters before their very eyes. They attacked, and through the uncorrupted gems’ horror, the boy had approached them and told them there was nothing they could do and they had to leave, being outnumbered by thousands of dangerous creatures.

Steven had explained the concept of corruption to them as they ran, stopping them from thinking they could stop and talk sense into their comrades. He hated the way he could see their despair in their eyes. In all his years living with them, he had never seen anything quite like the mixture of visceral horror and loss in their eyes. 

“Who are you? How do you know so much?” His mother asks. Tears in her eyes, she remains calm and composed.

Pearl chokes on a sob and points her spear.

“He’s probably a Homeworld spy! He knew the attack was coming! He knows what happened to them!”

Rose shakes her head, “But he’s just a human child.”

Pearl’s spear touches his chest and he backs up, right into Garnet, who grabs him by the shoulders and turns him around to face her. 

“Explain yourself!” She growls.

Steven gulps.

“You w-wouldn’t believe me. B-but I can prove it, I-I think. I hope?” 

Pearl’s spear digs into his back, close to ripping through his jacket and drawing blood.

Her sniffles remind him that she’s young (in the relative sense) and hysterical and fresh out of a war that ended in all of her comrades turning into monsters and would absolutely attack him if he freaked her out too much. 

Rose apparently senses his fear, because she lowers Pearl’s spear with her hand and places her other on Garnet’s shoulders.

They both calm, and next is Steven. 

One touch on his shoulder, and Steven felt a jolt. He flinches back.

Rose kneels so her eyes are at his level, “I’m not going to hurt you,” she comforts.

Steven’s breath hitches, “You won’t? You sure about that?! Cause you already have!”

It’s Rose’s turn to flinch back.

“I...I don’t know what I’ve done to you, but whatever it is I…”

“What? You’ll fix it?!” 

Steven wanted to stop but he couldn’t. Being faced with his mom, the real mom, is too much. Everything else has faded away. The mind he was trying to keep rational has broken into a whirlwind of emotions. 

He forgets where he is, and when he is, and he feels his heart hammering in his chest. He has turned pink, and the people around him have raised their weapons but he doesn’t even notice.

“You won’t fix it because that’s  _ my _ job! I’m the one fixing your mistakes! Taking care of all the people you hurt! Facing all the punishments you avoided! You’re not gonna fix anything because you’re a liar and a coward!”

The cave rumbles, rocks and dust falling from the ceiling.

Garnet growls and moves to attack him, and Steven would have deflected it no problem in his current state, if Rose had not swiftly raised her shield.

“How dare you!” Garnet bangs on the shield.

“Who do you think you are?!” Pearl adds.

Rose doesn’t take her eyes from Steven. They’re blown wide, and she gulps. She’s visibly shaking.

“Who are you?” She asks again.

Steven’s color fades, and he mentally kicks himself.

“I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve…” he sighs and lifts the hem of his shirt. 

Rose gasps. She knows her own gem. It’s one of a kind. 

“You’re...me?”

Pearl and Garnet freeze. Regardless, the shield stays.

Steven turns pink again. 

“No!” His voice cracks. “I’m Steven! Steven Universe! I’m not you! I’m me! I’m your son!”

His resolve dies down into awkwardness.

“F-from the future…” he adds sheepishly as his normal color returns.

“What?!” Pearl squeaks. 

“That’s not possible!” Garnet yells.

Steven sighs and summons his shield. He turns and holds it up to the others.

And they have a perfect side by side comparison.

They stare. Rose’s own shield dissipates.

She stands. Her eyes are unreadable.

“How?”

“Wha—?” Steven blanches, “Whaddaya mean how?! You’re the one who did it! You got pregnant then gave me your gem! Don’t ask  _ me _ !”

“Why would she do that?!” Pearl slams the bottom of her spear against the ground.

Rose interlocks her fingers and fiddles with her thumbs. 

“I—“

Her moment of uncertainty quickly shifts. She straightens. 

“Garnet, Pearl, I’m going to talk to him alone.”

They protest, clearly offended, scared, and distrustful. But they can’t argue with her when her mind was made up.

“You two stay here where it’s safe. S-steven and I will go for a little walk.”

“But the gems! There are still some around. They’ll attack!” Garnet warns.

Rose hesitantly places a hand on Steven’s shoulder. He tenses, and she notices, but she keeps it there. 

“We can handle it. I’ll meet you two back at the temple.”

Rose walks outside without checking to see if Steven is following her. 

He hesitates. He doesn’t want to be alone with his mom. Anytime he was, be it in her room or in his nightmares, it ended horribly. 

He instinctively looks to Garnet and Pearl for comfort or guidance, but he’s met with death glares instead.

“This is a trick! I know it is, and if you hurt her I will end you,” Pearl points her spear right at his throat. She is not kidding. He has never seen Pearl so deadly. He gulps.

“He won’t hurt her,” Garnet assures, “but we’ll be ready for whatever game he’s playing,” she towers over him.

Steven gives them a thumbs-up, “I read ya crystal clear,” he chuckles then follows Rose out the cave entrance.

She has her back turned. She looks out in the distance despite being faced with a dense forest, and boy was Steven familiar with that kind of gaze. The gems had it sometimes, Lapis especially before she started really getting better. He himself had it now as well, even when he looked at himself in the mirror.

Steven clears his throat. 

Rose doesn’t look at him. 

“Let’s go,” she whispers.

“Where?” 

He follows her for a few minutes in silence. She stops at the sight of one of the recently corrupted gems. It’s still irritated and rampaging, but it hasn’t taken notice of its company yet.

Rose turns to Steven. Her composure is gone, and it is  _ jarring _ . Steven freezes at her wide, teary eyes, her shaking hands.

“How do I fix this?” She pleads.

Pleading. It humanized her and Steven hated it. He didn’t want to sympathize with her. He didn’t hate her, but he was mad and he knew the minute she appears sympathetic, all his previously justified anger would turn into more guilt and shame. 

“Please…” she bends down, “please, she’s suffering. How do I make it stop? Do-do you know?”

Steven swears to himself, anger dissipating into empathy, and even pity. 

“Yeah. I know how, but you need the other Diamonds.”

She practically jumps out of her skin.

She suspected Steven knew her identity, if he was talking about fixing her mistakes, but it still shakes her core to have it confirmed. That her past never really left her. That someone will have to pick up the pieces of a broken past life she never wanted to confront. 

“No…” 

“What?”

“No, no, they’d never—they don’t understand.”

“They do now. I mean...in the future.”

Rose laughs bitterly, “No, it’s not possible.”

“Neither am I or the fact that I’m here in the past and yet here I am.”

“But...isn’t that horrible? That it takes me dying for them to see the hurt they cause?”

Steven scratches the back of his head, “Yeah, it totally is. They were pretty awful people. To you, too, and I don’t even know the full story. But I was able to get them to listen.”

“How?” 

“I just...well…” 

Steven realizes that it wasn’t so simple. It wasn’t something Rose could emulate successfully. His changing their minds required Rose being dead. If Rose walked back to Homeworld and tried to do any of what he did, she’d just be punished for eternity and never listened to again. She’d die in every sense of the word except for literal. 

Steven sighs. He really did feel bad for his mom. 

“You can’t,” Steven admits. “I think that only I could do it, because I’m literally not you. Blue and Yellow I think you could potentially win over but White would never have it. You’d go back and be even more miserable.” 

Rose bites her lip, clearly thinking of the possible fates if she returned. 

The corrupted gem takes notice of them.

Rose was emotionally defeated, though. She was sure she could handle it if she attacked her, but now she felt like she deserved it. She did this, after all.

Steven bubbles them. The gem bangs against the walls.

“Mo—Rose. I know you blame yourself. I know you didn’t mean to hurt anyone. But that doesn’t mean you give up trying. There are mistakes you’ll never be able to undo, but you can’t run from them! That’s how I’ve gotten so messed up!”

Teary and glazed over eyes look him up and down. 

“I hurt my own son...all I do is hurt people,” she says hopelessly.

The corrupted gem gave up trying to break the bubble and tries rolling it around.

Steven growls, “Agh! We’re having an important talk here!”

Steven clenches his fists and spikes form on the bubble’s surface. The gem recoils. 

Steven turns back to Rose with an accusing finger, “Yeah! You do! Because you don’t think about the consequences to your actions. And you run away because you don’t want to face them. And then you lie about it!”

Steven sighs.

“I’m sorry for being so harsh. Truth is, I have a lot of things I want to say to you and they’re mostly hurtful. I’ve been paying for your mistakes, picking up the pieces of our families, and I’ve almost been killed enough times to give me nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of my life. 

“I know you didn’t intend for this. I know you never do anything bad on purpose. You couldn’t have predicted that Homeworld would come back for earth. But they did and even though I’ve fixed everything, I feel like I’m falling apart. I’m depressed, I have PTSD, I don’t know what I want for my future, and I’ve been…”

Steven inhales deeply, “so angry. I feel so angry and worthless all the time. And I can’t blame it on you. I’m not blaming it all on you. This stuff is all on me. But what you left me to deal with? I shouldn’t have had to go through that.

“A-and,” he brings a hand up to his eyes to shield the tears from view, even though his breaking voice is giving it away, “I’m sorry to dump this on you, because I know that you l-love me, and that you want to be a good person, and that y-you hate yourself for everything you did and for putting me through this.

“And I know it seems like I hate you but I just—I’m just such a messed up person now, and I don’t know how to fix myself. I don’t know how to move on, and I understand so much of how you felt you have no idea.

“From how the Diamonds treated you to how you felt like a screw up, to hating yourself. To thinking everyone would be better off without you. I get it. I try so hard to not be like you, but I am like you. And I have to try hard not to make the same mistakes. So for that, I can thank you. I know what not to do.”

Steven sunk to his knees. The adrenaline of a corrupted gem circling his bubble was nothing compared to letting all this out.

“I used to be obsessed with being like you. Everyone wanted me to be you, and no one wanted me to be me. Even before I had to deal with your mistakes I had to live up to the expectations to be just like you. It took me fourteen years to find value in myself, then it took me three more for all of that to be undone.” 

His voice quickened, needing to take big shaky gasps between bursts of feelings.

“I—I can’t stop. I keep talking but I can’t stop. I’ve never opened up to anyone about this. Because I don’t know how. I’ve always been the one helping people that I don’t know how to accept it. I never was worth anything to anyone unless I was useful. And any time I needed help I was worthless and annoying and making everyone else’s problems worse.

“And I know that that’s why I am the way I am but I can’t fix it. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl and Dad have all been trying to help me but it just makes me hate myself more. Which just makes them feel worse which makes me feel worse!

“I thought I could finally be done and be at peace once everything was over but now I’m left with one problem left and it’s  _ me _ . And that’s all I’ve ever been was the problem unless I was fixing them. Now there’s nothing left to fix and I’m just one big unfixable problem!”

His chest heaves, his throat closes, and he sobs. He hugs himself and rocks against the wall of the bubble.

Comforting himself because it’s what he’s learned he has to do. 

But his mom was here this time. And his mom did what moms are supposed to do. 

She let him vent, and even though it hurt her, she didn’t let it show, and she wrapped his arms around him.

He recoils for a moment, and she freezes.

Steven looks at her through his tears, and sees his mom like he did when he was younger. Someone he longed for.

He returns the embrace and lets her pull him into her lap. He sobs into her chest.

“You can drop the bubble,” she whispers.

Steven obliges, letting Rose’s bubble take over, even though the corrupted gem has lost interest. 

He cries for a long time before he tires himself out. He just breathes heavily with wet hiccups discouraging him from opening his mouth to speak again, even if it was just to say he’s sorry. 

Rose strokes his hair, “I’m so proud of you, Steven. You shouldn’t have had to deal with my mistakes and I’m so sorry. You’re a wonderful person, no matter how you feel.”

Steven shook and tightened his hug.

“Don’t feel sorry for telling me this. You needed to tell me, and to talk about it, and I needed to know.”

—

Rose carried the exhausted Steven to the nearest warp pad and warped back to the temple.

They had poofed and bubbled the corrupted gem after Steven finished crying, and sent it back to the temple. Steven told her that was the most they could do to alleviate their pain, and to prepare for the future when they could be healed. 

After Steven’s long day--being sent back in time, dodging battling gems, then dodging  _ corrupted _ gems, and the emotional trainwreck that followed--fighting one of the gem monsters sapped the last of his energy. Rose picked him up in her arms, and though he protested, it didn’t take long for him to fall asleep.

Sure enough, Pearl and Garnet were there to swarm her when she arrived.

She held a finger to her lips.

They froze and watched her enter her room. A minute later, she reemerged without the human boy in her arms.

“I made a bed for him,” she explained at their confused stares, “he needs to sleep.”

“What happened?” Pearl asked.

“We talked.”

“About what?”

“About him. He’s a wonderful boy. He’s absolutely my son. Which, I want to be excited about, but, after what he told me, it’s difficult.”

“He told you about the future,” Garnet assumed.

“Yes.”

They waited for her to elaborate. 

Rose sighed, “At some point in the future, I’m going to have a son. And he’s going to do things I won’t be able to do, like heal the gems corrupted by that blast, or end the war with Homeworld for good. But I can make it easier for him by telling the truth.”

Pearl’s hands shot to her mouth. Garnet looked at her then at Rose with uncertainty.

“I’ll tell the truth about everything,” Rose said, “About all my mistakes. And I’ll do my best to fix what I can until the day comes that Steven is born. And when that day comes, I need you two to support him with everything you have in your hearts. To never make him feel worthless or like he needs to be anyone but himself. Understand?”

No answer. It was something so outside the realm of their current reality or realm of possibilities that they couldn’t comprehend any instructions on the matter.

Pearl’s voice burst through her hands, “You’re going to leave us?! To just...give up your life for a  _ human _ ?!”

Rose nodded, “I don’t fully understand, yet, either. But I know I will. I’m not the person who makes the decision yet. But I know Steven needs to exist, so when I make it, I’ll know I’m doing the right thing.”

Garnet adjusted her visor, “You can’t be sure you’ll have the boy again. You know too much, and that can change the future.”

Rose looked up with a hard gaze, “I _ hope _ it changes the future.  _ His _ future. Not ours or the universe’s, just his. I’m going to make sure of it that I bring him into the world and that he brings us to a new era of peace like he says, but he’ll be at peace, too.”

Pearl gaped, “What in the  _ world _ did you two talk about?”

Rose smiled, “I promise I will tell you two everything.  _ Everything _ . Once we return my son to his proper time. His family will miss him,” she gives them a bittersweet smile, “I know they love him very much.” 

**Author's Note:**

> ignore the fact that in this new timeline (steven will return to his own timeline with no changes) steven prolly has a whole other brand of issues from everyone knowing he'll save the universe one day. but that's alt!timeline steven's problem now, whoops. point is i wrote our steven talking to his mom and that's all i wanted. i picked this point in time cause i wanted the discussion to happen at what would be one of rose's (and pearl and garnet's) lowest points where she'd be given some hope from knowing everything will be okay some day and also is given time to fix what she can. 
> 
> rose hasn't yet developed her respect for humans or the feeling that she'd be better off gone so she's pretty shocked she'd give up her existence for a human to take her place (even though she is amazed by steven, and even though i do believe rose simply wanted to have a kid as the ultimate motivation despite other factors intermingling). but she values possibilities/impossibilities and so isn't surprised she would do something as impossible as have steven just cause she wants to. which is why she accepts the reality of steven so easily. also time travel obviously isn't outside of gems' scope of reality.


End file.
